ALON GAME REVIEW 2022

If I picture the persona of a hardcore gamer, two images instantly spring to mind. 1. The streamer who specialises in eSports titles and first-person shooters. They spend their days screaming down a microphone, thanking their followers for donations and subscribing. 2. The gamer who grinds out results for hours at a time, the real world no longer exists to them, and all that matters is the online realm, and the clan they now call their family. Think South Park and the episode: Make Love, Not Warcraft. That image is the metaphorical nail on the head.

I’ve flitted between both states, but now I’m comfortable playing shorter games, hiding behind the defence that my typed reviews give me. The genre MMORPG rarely crosses my path, not because I don’t enjoy them, no, it’s because of the lack of time that I can invest.

The MMORPG genre has certainly grown by leaps and bounds over the past couple of years, with at least two new triple-A titles being launched every year alongside expansions to the successfully established ones. As the market grows, so do the standards by which these games are measured. Players have come to expect features that they have seen in other MMOs, and never mind that these features were released a year after those games were launched. The fact is that they have them now, so these new games had better have them too. Two weeks ago, NCSoft's latest MMORPG Aion launched amid much hype and expectation. By all accounts, the game has so far been living up to these expectations and although the MMO gaming community has proven to be rather fickle in the past, this sustained enthusiasm bodes well for it.